Senator Joe Manchin in the middle of energy debate over clean electricity standards
In making the case against the proposed “clean electricity standard,” a national energy mandate included in Senator Bernie Sanders’ partisan budget plan, Jason Huffman and Clint Woods invoke a memorable ad from West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin.
Manchin’s classic 2010 campaign ad became famous for his pointing a rifle at a piece of paper flapping in the wind as he committed to “take dead aim at the cap-and-trade bill because it is bad for West Virginia.”
As Huffman, state director of Americans for Prosperity-West Virginia, and Woods, AFP’s policy fellow for regulations, writes in an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail, the so-called clean electricity standard is just another version of cap-and-trade – a “national energy mandate … that turbocharges the most harmful elements of the failed cap-and-trade policy and the unfair Clean Power Plan.”
And, they point out, there’s nothing especially clean about this plan.
- One study by the Obama administration’s chief economist found that “state renewable mandates result in residential electricity price increases and represent one of the least efficient strategies to reduce emissions.
- Since 2007, the 20 states without renewable mandates have, on average, reduced per capita energy-related carbon dioxide emissions more than twice as much as the 30 states with a mandate.”
A lot of pain, but not much – if any – gain.
Manchin is positioned, as a key swing vote in the Senate, to “take another shot at cap-and-trade” because Sanders’ national energy mandate is “holding together support for trillions of dollars in ‘infrastructure’ spending.”
Read more about the debate on the clean electricity standard in the Charleston Gazette-Mail op-ed.
